The money we save is more of a nice bonus, which we'd rather swap for a new guidebook to the best multi-pitch routes around Passo di Sella than for a little room with edelweiss carved into the bedhead and a can of Coca-Cola for five euros from the minibar. We were bending over live edelweiss a few hours ago on the descent from the Schubert route on Piz Ciavazes. And while we dip our feet into an icy pool below a waterfall to rinse off the leathery whiff of climbing shoes, the Coke chills too – bought for seventy-five cents at the Spar in Cavalese.
This is what we love. Gazing out of the open boot at the dark outlines of the Dolomite walls, gleaming white by day, which under a thousand stars take on a strange dominance over our human smallness. Snuggled waist-deep in down sleeping bags, we take turns reading aloud from the yellowed pages of a book about Himalayan tigers (Himálajští tygři), hunted down on the shelves of a second-hand bookshop. We pour the last two hundred millilitres of wine into our mugs and then let the door of our apartment click shut behind us.
We'll dream of a Bialetti releasing a steady stream of steam, and with it the smell of fresh coffee, into the mild morning air soaking up the warmth of the first rays of sun to clear the huge walls to the east. Good night. Or is it good morning already?
Better than being woken at four in the morning by drops of water falling in a steady rhythm onto your sleeping mat right by your head, because the ice coating the ceiling of the rock bivouac has started to change state with a sudden warm spell before dawn? Better than writhing with stomach cramps in the middle of the night and dashing bare-bottomed three times in half an hour out of a semi-warm sleeping bag and the steamed-up car into minus twenty, all while listening to your mate's reproachful “what the hell are you running around for?” Or better than not bothering to scout out a flat spot in time – while it's still light – and then spending the whole night dodging a root under your right thigh?
Definitely. It could be better.
But would you then remember the just-firm-enough hypoallergenic mattress with an Aloe Vera finish, the porcelain bowl with a warm wooden seat and the rain drumming on a tin roof?
“We wring out our soaked gear and enjoy a beautiful spot for the night. Wrapped up in down jackets, we stretch out comfortably on our bed of stone. To keep from falling, we've tied ourselves in to a rope slung over a rock spike.”
— Radan Kuchař, Ten Big Walls (Deset velkých stěn)
You're alive when things are happening to you. Not when you're just vegetating.
That's why we look for big overhanging boulders rather than big luxurious rooms. Parking off the beaten track rather than outside a guesthouse. A corkscrew lost at the bottom of the climbing gear crate rather than a busy head waiter recommending the right bottle. Red is best anyway. Ideally mulled in a Jetboil. Just turn the gas down in time. It catches fire.
Park overnight? Forbidden. Light a fire? Forbidden. Bathe in a waterfall? Forbidden. Climb the highest peak of the range under your own steam? Forbidden. Pitch a tent? Forbidden. Bivouac? Well, maybe in an emergency. But woe betide you if you abuse it.
What is allowed is building a cable car. A gondola. To carry thousands of people up every day who would never get there otherwise with their weak lungs and ample waistlines. And it's allowed to fly a supply helicopter over the mountains to bring in provisions to feed all those hungry mouths who, at two and a half thousand metres, crave a choice of at least ten main courses and an ice-cream sundae. "What, you don't do pizza?" I heard that myself at a hut in the middle of the mountains. I'd bet they'll be serving it within two years. A frozen Guseppe ham pizza at the very least.
But what harm does a climber do, stirring a pouch of Dobrý hostinec instant food with a bent aluminium spoon in stream water bubbling over a stove flame, having carried everything up here on his back – to the foot of an overhanging boulder with stones stacked around it as a windbreak – and carrying it all back down in the morning? And burying the brown stuff.
"A Tatra bivouac. Sleeping mat, sleeping bag, stove, a pretty girl... pure romance."
— video by an unknown author on YouTube
Responsibility may matter more than bans. Want to light a fire under a rock face? It looks like summer will be dry again, so think about whether it's a good idea – and if it is, put the fire out properly afterwards. Don't fancy squeezing into a stuffy Matratzenlager and trying to drown out the snoring with your own lip-smacking? Obviously you won't leave rubbish lying under the boulder. Unlike your poo, which you bury in the ground. Lightweight pocket trowels are easy to get hold of. Love the easy life of carrying your bedroom in the boot and stirring pasta with one-euro-twenty pesto in the shelter of the left rear wheel? Respect private land and the "No Camping" signs.
It's actually a wonderful feeling. Worn out from a whole day clawing your way up a six-hundred-metre wall, you collapse into that camping chair, crank the handle of the grinder for fresh coffee and set the silver Bialetti, its base by now permanently blackened, over the flame of the gas stove. You wash your hands, grimy with the classic mix of climbing chalk and rock dust, in water sparingly poured by your mate from a ten-litre jerrycan. And then you just sit there, slurping coffee from a tin mug that has also rinsed away the last of the dried wine, polishing off a three-day-old bundt cake and watching everyone gradually drive away, while you stay.
Only one problem stays too: the billy can greasy from that basil pesto, and deciding which of you will go and scrub it in cold water while the other rearranges the car for sleeping. Which you can survive. Or rather, savour?
Lowe Alpine AT Kit Bag holdall-backpack
Lowe Alpine Aeon backpack
Asolo Space GV trekking boots
Bridgedale Hike Ultralight socks
I climb mountains. I write about mountains. I photograph mountains. And I always come back happy. It's written in my name, after all.
